Political Scene: Making Sense of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman

Trayvon Martin’s death and George Zimmerman’s acquittal have a lot of people talking about race, guns, and the nature of self-defense. That hasn’t been an entirely good thing. “I have been just shocked by the polarized, angry reaction that I have seen on social media about this case,” Jeffrey Toobin says on this week’s Political Scene podcast. There are some things that really do need discussing, though. “It’s difficult to say that the jury got it right. In terms of being in accordance with the law, it seems as if they were,” Jelani Cobb says. But getting it right “raises other, thornier questions about what, exactly, are the parameters of self-defense, and whether or not the law is constructed in such a way as to produce verdicts that might be legal, but not necessarily just.” Listen as Toobin and Cobb join host Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the placement of this case in America’s politics, culture, and history.